Illegal names for children in Italy: Maradona, Goku, Snow White and other banned names

Frodo, Satan, Pollon, Maradona, Goku, Benito Mussolini these are just some of the names we cannot call children in our country. This is why when choosing the name of a future unborn child, it is good to check the list of prohibited names And illegal in Italy. Our country, in fact, as well as most other states, has adopted some laws regulating names for future unborn children, to prevent them from causing harm or embarrassment to the child.

From a social and anthropological point of view, in fact, some names (or words) are subject to taboos: that is, it is forbidden to use them and pronounce them publicly for religious, historical or political reasons. Even in Italy there is a taboo on the names that can be used: to prevent the unborn child from ending up with a embarrassing, insulting, offensive or ridiculous namethe law has drawn up a sort of blacklistwhich, for example, doesn't allow parents to name their children Doraemon or Dracula.

don't miss this article

Surnames: what they mean, when we use them and how they are attributed around the world

What the Italian law says about illegal names

Italian law protects future unborn children by preventing parents from giving their child the name of a character from a TV series or a cartoon or a controversial character from history.

There law 396/2000, to articles 34 and 35, prevents giving the child a name that could “cause moral harm “, that is what ridicule or bring shamefor example why attributable to swear words, insults or color names. It's okay to call your child White, but we can't call a child Yellow.

As a rule, we read some general rules:

The child's name must match the gender of the unborn child (apart from a few exceptions of names like Andrea)
THE foreign names of children with Italian citizenship must be expressed with the Italian alphabet – the letters j,x,y,k,w are allowed. For example, if we wanted to give a German name that has the scharfes S (ß) we would have to Italianize it into a double s.
You cannot give the newborn the name of parent, living brother or sister;
The son cannot be named after the fathernot even adding “junior” or “jr” (as happens in the USA)
You cannot use a surname as a first name

On the list of banned names we find: